BAN and AISI work together to invest in OpenRefactory

AI Startup Incubator (AISI) in Prague, in partnership with Bangladesh Angels, have invested into OpenRefactory, a US-Bangladeshi deeptech startup.

The main product of the US-Bangladeshi company is Intelligent Code Repair (iCR), which detects bugs with high precision and is the first of its kind to synthesise fixes for the detected bugs. OpenRefactory aims to enable companies of different sizes to get to their security, reliability and compliance goals without an army of engineers continuously triaging the false warnings generated by current bug detection tools. 

Studies have shown that developers create on average 70 bugs per 1000 lines of code. While most bugs are detected during testing, up to 20% of the errors still make it to a customer. Today, the error detection software segment is a USD2.1 bn industry. 

"Currently, most software developers have to spend hours searching and evaluating bugs in code. This process leads to ineffectively used time and large extra costs. We see a future in services such as OpenRefactory, due to the fact their team brings a solution that supports software developers, letting them focus on the fun parts of coding instead of looking for bugs that can be instantaneously fixed," says Angelo Burgarello, a managing partner at AI Startup Incubator. 

"OpenRefactory is the perfect solution for companies which are looking to reduce the software developers' overhead and bring large savings," says AISI board member Jiří Devát. 

Current detection tools operate with a high rate of false positives, identifying false warnings for bugs. Developers need to manually review the warnings, evaluate them to find the actual bugs, and fix the errors. Thus, the process became highly demanding and costly and made the present detection industry focus on B2B sales at large companies. 

OpenRefactory is not only able to find the bugs but also fix them. The company's iCR examines code ex-post, starting the analysis after writing the code. OpenRefactory's Intelligent Code Repair generates a substantial decrease of false positives, from over 50% to 3%. OpenRefactory offers the cloud platform-based product for 25 USD per hour, making the software more affordable. iCR operates in two languages, Java and C, and the company is looking to expand it to further languages and platforms, for example, Python and Android. 

"Automation and AI are opening the door to empowering developers to generate code more easily. Developers can produce code more quickly, but they also introduce errors when working quickly. iCR allows developers to work at top speed because it can check their work and rapidly detect and correct their common programming errors. Best part? The entire code is built with Bangladeshi developers in Bangladesh," says Munawar Hafiz, CEO of OpenRefactory. 

"OpenRefactory represents many firsts for us. It is our first cross-border investment across not one, but two jurisdictions, between Europe and the US. It is our first investment into a software platform, whose primary base of development is in Bangladesh, but nevertheless serving a global clientele. It is also our first deeptech company, leveraging years of AI-driven intellectual property that the founders have developed. We are very happy to facilitate this partnership, and believe the commercialisation of iCR will put Bangladesh and Bangladeshi engineers on the map within the global developer community for high quality, world-class tools," says Navojit Dastidar, Associate and Europe Lead for Bangladesh Angels.